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Do you believe in magic? It’s harder as we grow older, when test results or finances aren’t great, or life serves up some other mess to handle. But writer-director Jim Sheridan’s “In America,” which one critic called “a movie laced with magic and made with palpable affection,” shows how magic and hope can appear when we need them,…

The number one movie at the box office in 1980 was the second “Star Wars” movie, “The Empire Strikes Back.” The number two movie was a comedy about three female office workers. It became a cultural touchstone, along with its hit song, and inspired an unsuccessful television series and a successful Broadway musical. It was…

When Taylor Swift dropped the cover for her upcoming album “The Tortured Poets Department,” classic and silent films fans were swirling over the title of one song in particular: “Clara Bow.” Articles sprung up explaining who exactly Bow was (although many erroneously labeled her the original film flapper; that moniker belongs to Olive Thomas and…

Movies set in a law or court-based arena are ripe for potent cinematic drama. After all, there’s some sort of conflict—often an actual lawsuit—at the center. But the great films have more than that. First, there is the case at issue, and the stakes can often be life-and-death. (For example, someone’s on death row or a…

The Final Girl needs no introduction, but here’s one anyway: she’ll get what she wants, if she’s holding the knife. Horror movies started relying on intrepid, doe-eyed Final Girls to round out their posters long before Professor Carol J. Clover defined them as “female victim-[heroes]” in her influential 1987 essay “Her Body, Himself :Gender in the…